What to do when you hate Windows 10

In the good old days of Windows 10, the upgrade was free, and you had 31 days to roll back if you wanted to. But those days are over, and now, if you really, really hate Windows 10, your options are not that great. But here they are anyway--and good luck.

[The rest]Every once in a while it pays to be a packrat. Do if you have a hard copy of a prior version of Windows on a disc or flash drive, you can start over by wiping your hard drive and reinstalling from scratch. But it’s going to be a pain in the neck--you’ll have to back up all your other files and applications, and reinstall everything after you’re done.

If your PC had an OS recovery partition from the vendor, and if you backed up that partition before you upgraded to Windows 10, you might be able to use it to go back to a prior version. However, Windows 10 probably wiped that partition when it installed, so without a backup you’re probably out of luck.

The other option is to spend some time tweaking Windows 10 so it’s more like good ol’ Windows 7 or Windows 8. You can delve into Settings disable Cortana’s nosy “helpfulness,” you can bring back the Start menu, you can change desktop colors, and you can even exercise a little control over automatic updates.

Now that Windows 10 has you in its cold, hard grasp, it’s not going to let go easily. For more tips on escaping the worst of Windows 10, write to us at answer@pcworld.com.